Oh No, the Past Won't Keep Them Down
2 Troupes Eloquently Express Victims' Pain

At dress rehearsal Friday, Urban Bush Women and the male Compagnie Jant-Bi expressed the past with grace and emotion in "Les Ecailles de la M¿moire." (Photos By Dayna Smith For The Washington Post)
 

  By Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 4, 2008; C05

"Les Ecailles de la Mémoire" ("The Scales of Memory") takes the past as its subject, but there is nothing dreamy, dusty or academic about it. A collaboration between the all-female Urban Bush Women and the all-male Compagnie Jant-Bi, it has the force of uncorked acid.

Performed over the weekend at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, this new work proposed an answer to the question that can trouble so many victimized groups wrestling with bloody histories: How does one live with the trauma?

Slavery and racism were the focus of these dancers, all of whom are either native Africans or of African heritage. Jant-Bi, under the direction of Germaine Acogny, a highly respected longtime promoter of African dance, is based in Senegal. The multinational members of Urban Bush Women, led by the gifted Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, are headquartered in Brooklyn. But "Les Ecailles" is more than a screed against specific crimes; there were deeply human and universal truths to be mined in this view of a people united in collective memory, sifting through the pain, and finally emerging with an identity that is stronger for the experience.

"Les Ecailles" featured seven members from each troupe, who traveled together to various sites in the South that are important in the history of slavery and the civil rights movement. They then collaborated on the 90-minute work at L'Ecole des Sables, Acogny's academy of African dance in Senegal.

Churned-up anger and defiance were palpable in the piece; sheer explosive energy in scenes of being bound, of being auctioned off and thrashed into exhaustion, played a major role. This was no surprise coming from Urban Bush Women, a group known for its exceptional poetry as well.